PECKED TO DEATH BY DUCKS by...

PECKED TO DEATH BY DUCKS by Tim Cahill (Vintage: $12; 375 pp.). In this collection of articles, Cahill assumes the role of sardonic guide, offering the reader his impressions of offbeat topics that range from the serenely pastoral life on an island in Lake Titicaca to the wanton vandalism of Iraqi troops in Kuwait City. His straightforward prose is refreshingly free of Paul Theroux’s incessant carping and P. J. O’Rourke’s grating smugness. Cahill retains a healthy sense of his own absurdity, especially when he tries some nutty stunt: Para-gliding recalls childhood games of dressing up as Superman, and he concludes, “It was nothing more than my old red cape writ large; the ancient fantasy expressed, once again, as laundry.”